Gretchen Rubin’s The Four Tendencies

We’ve been in a series on personality on the blog (in the last post, Justine took us through The 5 Love Languages), covering the basics of some common tests and ways of understanding yourself and your preferences.

Something I’ve learned over the past few years is the huge impact personality and an understanding of self has on your ability to reach your goals, form and maintain healthy relationships, and to become the person you want to be. I’ve seen it time and time again in my own life as well as the lives of those around me.

I think a big reason so many people keep meeting resistance when setting out to reach their goals is that they’re following the advice of one person who is very different from them. The advice works for that person but not for you. Does that mean there’s something wrong with you? HECK NO! We’re just all too unique and different to fit into one cookie cutter piece of advice. What works for one person may not work for everyone.

You can avoid a lot of extra resistance just by knowing yourself and your tendencies. The more you know about yourself, the better advantage you have. That’s why today I’d like to talk to you about Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies. I think this framework can provide valuable insight into yourself and the best way to approach your goals so you can skip a lot more of that trial and error stage and more easily reach success.

Gretchen Rubin observed that people tend to fall into four different categories based upon how readily they meet both outer and inner expectations. She calls these categories “The Four Tendencies“…

Upholders

“Upholders respond readily to both outer expectations and inner expectations.” (“Discipline is my freedom”) They are quite rare. These are the kinds of people who can set and reach their goals or New Year’s resolutions without much fuss. However, a downside can be that they sometimes stick to things even if they don’t want to do it anymore (keeping habits or rules for the sake of it).

Questioners

“Questioners question all expectations; they meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified, so in effect they respond only to inner expectations.” (“I’ll comply–if you convince me why”) Questioners need justification for everything that they do. It’s not that they won’t ever follow any outer expectations, they just need to be able to understand WHY; it needs to make sense for them so they can, in a way, turn it into an inner expectation before they can get on board with it.

Obligers

“Obligers respond readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations.” (“You can count on me, and I’m counting on you to count on me”) Obligers do great with supervision, deadlines, duty as a role model, etc. They hate letting other people down, but they’re often more ok with letting themselves down (putting other people first sometimes even at the cost of themselves). Accountability is huge for the success of the Obliger.

Rebels

“Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike.” (“You can’t make me, and neither can I”) Rebels are motivated by choice and freedom. They want to do what they want to do when they want to do it. They hate habits, control, and restraint so much that they don’t even take orders from themselves. They can, however, develop habit-like behavior, they just have to choose it each time because they need to be able to want to do it and have the choice rather than feeling like they have to do it.

Let me tell you a little story about how this has affected me personally.

If I knew of these 4 tendencies back in college I probably would’ve assumed I was an “upholder” because everyone always told me how much they admired my discipline and I felt like I was always fairly good at reaching my goals. I even was valedictorian at my college. Now that I’m out of school I found myself meeting more resistance than ever before! I realized I was more easily able to accomplish things when I had accountability, but every time I tried to meet an inner goal without telling anyone it was a serious struggle! I didn’t understand what was happening to me–why was I so disciplined in school my whole life but struggling so much now?

After taking the quiz and reading the book I realized I’m an “obliger.” And when I thought about it–school was very much an OUTER expectation. I love learning, but I probably wouldn’t have worked so hard on homework if it wasn’t for my deep desire to avoid disappointing my professors and my parents. There were so many outer expectations and both indirect and direct accountability to get good grades. I’ve been in school my entire life, so I felt like I was good at accomplishing my goals…but once I graduated and had more time to pursue more inner goals (without telling anyone) I found it to be much more difficult. Now that I know I’m an obliger I know what adjustments I need to make to more easily reach my goals.

As an Obliger, accountability is huge! (note: Accountability is necessary for the Obliger tendency, but it can be potentially harmful for any other tendency, especially the rebel) I naturally want to help other people and be thought of as “reliable” (and so badly don’t want to be thought of as fickle), so publicly talking about my goals or having someone working on the same goal with me to hold each other accountable is a huge help for me.

Depending on a person’s personality type or upbringing, even an obliger can vary. Some can do little tricks to give the feel of accountability (like something as simple as having a to-do list), while others require an actual real and present human involved.

It doesn’t matter which category you fall into (none is greater than another); what matters is that you know your tendency so you can have a head start at knowing what will most likely work best for you or not. You can be just as successful as anyone else once you know the best strategies for your tendency.

Want to learn more about The Four Tendencies?

Take the quiz (click here!) and read the book!

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After taking the quiz, which tendency do you have? Are you an upholder, questioner, obliger, or rebel? Comment below!